Café Art Partners

Café Art's photographers and volunteers at the launch of their exhibition in the Qbic Hotel, London, in 2017.

Every year we partner with charities that run art groups with people who are homeless or have recently been homeless.

The homeless charities including 
240 Project, 
C4WS Homeless Project, 
Crisis, 
Holy Cross Centre Trust, 
Pritchard’s Road Day Centre, 
Providence Row, 
One Support, 
SANktUS, 
SHP, 
St Mungo’s, 
The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields, 
The Pavement Magazine, 
The Pilion Trust and 
Thames Reach let us connect with the people affected by homelessness.

Have you heard the expression “It takes a village to raise a child”?

Café Art wouldn't be where it is today without the help and support of so many of people and organisations over the years.

Homeless Link, the umbrella organisation for UK homelessness-sector organisations, endorses us. In 2019 Homeless Link provided one of our staff - director Paul Ryan - a desk to work from as part of their programme to support many social enterprises. 

 The Royal Photographic Society provides volunteers and contacts in other countries, including Ronaldo Aguiar, an RPS member in São Paulo, who helped with all aspects of the MinhaSão Paulo calendar project there in November 2015. In London the local group members are key volunteers on the camera handout day in July.  London RPS member Julian Rouse has been running the weekly photography mentoring group online since early 2020.

Café Art is based in the Qbic Hotel, 42 Adler Street, London. Since November 2014 we have have paintings and photographs stored in their basement and they have a permanent exhibition of MyLondon photographs in the hotel. This is where we store the calendars!

The Old Diorama Arts Centre has provided us with exhibition spaces including our international art exchange "This is Where I Live". Additionally, they have hosted several artists in residences and solo exhibitions. 

MyLondon Photo Project partners

Fujifilm UK has been a massive support. Every year they donate 100 disposable  QuickSnap cameras to our project. they also help with the printing of signage for our MyLondon exhibitions. Fujifilm helped towards the cost of printing the calendars and greetings cards by Emmerson Press in 2020.

Jessops develop the film, and print the photographs from the cameras we get back. They also give us generous discounts on the printing of enlargements for online orders.

Emmerson Press use Fujifilm equipment and we were introduced to them by Fujifilm in 2020. They gave us a generous discount when printing the 2021 calendars and the new greetings cards.

CarterWong designed the calendar. CarterWong also designed our Café Art logo and the MyLondon and MyWorld logos! Other famous logos they have created include the F1 logo and Walls ice-cream!

Spitalfields E1 Market gives us market space for the public vote in August, the calendar launch week in October and let us have space for a table to sell the calendar from October to January.

St Paul’s Cathedral provided the Wren Suite in the Crypt. This allowed us to hand out the 100 cameras every year and receive them back 7 days later. Later we were allowed to use the Crypt to sit down with the photographers to choose the exhibition (every photographer can choose three photos each for the exhibition).

The Pret Foundation partnered with a local Pret a Manger to provide refreshments for 100 MyLondon participants on the day of the handout, including drinks and snacks. They also provided food for the opening of the exhibition in Spitalfields Market.

Christie’s provides a boardroom in central London to carry out the judging every year (apart from 2020 when it was online). We first met them in 2012 when Michael Wong approached them to hang an exhibition in their auction rooms - the artists were very happy to have their art hanging on the same walls as Picasso, Monet and many more famous artists! 

Support Professionals LTD have been a generous donor to us as well avid supporter of the MyLondon calendar.

Financial supporters

Our RPS photographic mentoring was the awarded the Santander Discovery award worth £5,000 in 2018.

The National Lottery Community Fund helped us in 2020 to run an art mentoring programme run by Cafe Art artist and photographer Geraldine Crimmins. The mentoring also included helping the artist keep connected with regular phone top-ups and an exhibition online.

The Cafe Art 'Art in Cafes project' received it first lot of funding in Cafe Art's  history from the East End Foundation to help with the cost of framing artworks! 

To assist with the cost of hosting the public vote of the 2019 MyLondon top 20 images, Tower Hamlets Council have donated £1,250 toward our event!

Cafe Art are happy to announce that we were awarded a grant to help pay for the salary of our Development Manager, to help further Cafe Arts impact and development within London and internationally. 

Oath / Verizon helped our member Geraldine Crimmins establish her art mentoring programme in 2018-2020. 

Covid-19: The Social Enterprise Support Fund was awarded to support the MyLondon Photo Project in 2020. The grant contributed towards the calendar printing costs, buying envelopes and paying postage costs and other production costs.

Special thanks

Thank you to the following companies who also support the MyLondon project Allen & Overy, Atlantis Art Materials, Borough Market, Citibank Group, Christie’s, freshart New York, HomeGround Melbourne, The London Photo Festival, Orzo Coffee, People’s Palace Projects, PopUp Painting, PwC, St James’s Church Piccadilly Market, Snappy Snaps Muswell Hill, Southwark Cathedral, Streetwise Opera and With One Voice. 

​

Volunteers

Volunteers work on this project giving hours of their time – of course it would not be possible without them. Many volunteers are people who have participated in the programmes. The following are some of the activities done with the help of our unpaid volunteers:

• hanging and swapping of artwork in the cafes and pop-up exhibitions

• helping the camera handout in July

• the exhibition selection panel

• helping the participants select their 3 photos for the exhibition

• helping the public vote week in August

• editing and proofreading the exhibition captions and the MyLondon calendar

• helping participants sell the calendar in the market

• mentoring the photography group